Working on alternative protein policy in the EU
Interview with IEEP's Tijn van Vugt, 80,000 Hours' perspective on climate change, talks, vacancies, and much, much more!
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With the recent re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, climate action has fundamentally changed. 🇺🇸 We’ll explore the implications in future newsletters, but if you already want to read something now, we recommend Founders Pledge’s election-proofing philanthropy strategy or this LinkedIn post by Future Matters’ Vegard Beyer.
💬 Career spotlight: Working on alternative protein policy in the EU
Tijn van Vugt is a visiting fellow at the Institute for European Environmental Policy. Let’s get to know him and his work! Tijn, what is IEEP and what are impact-driven sustainability policy strategies?
“The Institute for European Environmental Policy is an independent sustainability think tank and a trusted advisor for almost over half a century to European policy makers. It helps policy makers to develop impactful strategies to improve sustainability by conducting evidence-based research. The think tank consists of many experts, especially regarding agriculture and food, biodiversity and land-use. Research from IEEP is proving already for a long time that our current agrifood system is not sustainable.”
Why did you join and how well did your background prepare you for that?
“I want to contribute to a more sustainable agrifood system, and I believe that this is one of the greatest challenges at this time. I believe that our agrifood system is a victim and driver of the climate crisis and already exceeds our planetary boundaries, by taking up half of the world’s habitable surface and impacting biodiversity, water-usage, animal welfare and public health. This will require a dietary shift to plant-based foods, researching promising agrifood innovations and creating opportunities for farmers to transition to a sustainable agrifood system.
I joined IEEP through a fellowship from the School for Moral Ambition, as founded by Rutger Bregman. Before joining IEEP, I worked in strategy consulting, local policy-making and the non-profit sector. I hope that my previous experience sets me up to achieve positive impact effectively with as few resources as possible.”
“I’ve been working at IEEP for a month now, but before that I received a training with a group of fellows to enable my career switch from strategy consulting to a sustainability think tank. We learned about the mechanism of the agrifood industry from a range of incredible experts, and where they believe that the opportunities are to improve its sustainability. We concluded the training with a week in Brussels to explore how the world of European politics looks like, and how non-profits can reach policy makers to discuss their impactful ideas.”
What needs to change according to you?
“Ultimately, we need to build a sustainable agrifood system in Europe and across the globe. I think that this requires disruptive changes in what and how much we consume and the way we produce our foods. In my view, we need to start creating food environments for consumers where the sustainable plant-based food option is affordable, available and attractive. Besides, consumers need clear labelling to distinguish sustainable foods from other options. Farmers and food processors need this demand to produce food sustainably, and public procurement can play a pivotal role to kick-start this. Down the line, we need a European-wide strategy spanning demand and supply policies to develop a sustainable agrifood system.”
🔔 Short news
Giving Green has updated their philanthropic strategies and the world’s most effective non-profits.
The Dutch Government has published a public consultation for its Climate Plan 2025-2035. We believe this poses an excellent potentially impactful opportunity to exert influence on environmental policy. We’re pushing for grassroots advocacy to help people submit their ideas. Want to join? Contact us!
Effective Environmentalism’s Ruben Dieleman was part of a panel at the most recent edition of Tien Procent Club Rotterdam to talk about effective climate giving, as well as a talk to EA Bergen online.
Centre for Feed Innovation has started! The new NGO is accelerating the development of novel feed ingredients.
A cool app we’d like to highlight: The Green Policies Dashboard
Applications for the EAGxVirtual 2024 impact conference close on November 14th.
Online winter school: Climate Change and the Long-Term Future, University of Groningen. 29/30 January 2025
Project Innerspace produced a song and it’s unironically 🔥fire🔥
📰 What we’ve been reading and listening to
80.000 Hours has an update with regards to their problem ranking of climate change.
Nate Silver on the 80,000 Hours podcast:
I wonder if climate is this example of this issue that EA sees as overindexed. There was a lot of concern about climate, but what if you built climate organisations that are more “rational”? Is that an underexploited niche? Because they get so political and they get so embedded in the progressive politics. Could you build a climate organisation that’s somehow immune from, shall we say, the dangers of wokeness and things like that, and co-option from people who want to adopt that for non-climate objectives?
Scholar Yascha Mounk has ideas on what Effective Environmentalism should look like:
Four effective giving opportunities for stopping biodiversity loss, according to Effectiv Spenden, are alternative proteins, supply chain transparency, legal action, and wetland conservation.
Technical Report on Decarbonizing High-Temperature Heat in Industry by Future Cleantech Architects
Weighted Factor Models: Consider using the geometric mean instead of the arithmetic mean. A forum post about making better decisions by Soemano Zeijlmans, one of our co-directors.
👩💼 Job openings
We are highlighting some outstanding opportunities to make a positive difference with your careers. These positions are vetted by Effective Environmentalism and 80,000 Hours and are not sponsored.
Europe
The Good Food Institute Europe is looking for two Policy Officers to join our EU policy team.
Other
Have you joined our new Effective Environmentalism LinkedIn group yet? Share links, ask questions, and find collaborators on your projects. It’s a great way to stay up-to-date with the effective environmentalism community.
You can find more impactful environmental job openings at 80,000 Hours, or find careers specific to developing alternative proteins here.
💶 Consider Effective Environmentalism for Giving Season
Effective Environmentalism is currently a volunteer-run initiative, but we would like to scale up our activities to more effectively grow a global community of people and organisations tackling environmental issues as effectively as possible. Financial support would help us to devote more time to growing the field of effective environmentalism.
If you are a donor or work for a grant-making organisation, please get in touch.